Previews

Blue Dragon

Spiffy:

Iffy:

Digging through poop; nothing that we haven't seen before; lack of chainsaw weapons and associated gore.

It's been a long wait, but Blue Dragon is finally approaching readiness for distribution in these United States and we found this cutesy-poo Japanese RPG to be exactly the experience that we've been dying for on the 360. It's nowhere near as violent as some of the 360's top-sellers like Gears of War, so if you're hoping for a festival of blood and gore you'll be disappointed. Blue Dragon shines in ways that don't require tons of blood-drenched gibs flying at the camera; it's a classic role-playing game where meandering through the beautifully rendered environment is its own joyous reward.

Swallow the Spheres, Children.

Blue Dragon, for all of its darling character designs, contains some of the most hilariously questionable advice for young children we've ever come across in a video game. Shortly after beginning the game, we heard a strange disembodied voice urging our collection of three feisty kids (Shu, Jiro and Kluke) to eat glowing balls. Always excited by the prospect of forcing children to eat bizarre things, we had our group swallow the spheres as instructed. Of course, the kids fell to the floor writhing in pain (excellent!), but they also gained the magical ability to manifest their shadows into powerful monsters capable of fighting on their behalf (even more excellent!).

This is the premise on which Blue Dragon is based: if you find a glowing ball and a mysterious voice tells you that you should devour the thing, you'd better do it or you'll never wield the magical energies required to complete your quest. Now, you might also die of radiation poisoning if the glowing balls are actually lumps of radium, but there's a 50/50 chance that you'll become a magician. We'll take those odds.

Empowered with glow-ball shadow manipulation, we continued on our original quest, which has something to do with giant purple clouds causing problems for our village. Completely in line with standard Japanese RPG techniques, progress in Blue Dragon revolves around cruising through the world and smacking the tar out of any insects or giant rats that you happen to encounter. Breaking slightly from JRPG tradition, however, Blue Dragon lets you pick your battles by allowing you to decide whether or not to pick a fight with any given enemy. You can even get the jump on unsuspecting monsters by attacking them while their backs are turned.

In another instance of gloriously dubious suggestions, the enemies that you defeat sometimes leave behind tiny treasures in the form of pieces of poo. You are invited to search through the poo in order to find money or other valuables, and of course your scatological investigations are always rewarded with a delightfully disgusting "squish, squish" sound effect. ESRB be damned, we couldn't help but giggle with each poop prod... who cares what kind of message it sends to the impressionable young minds that might pick up Blue Dragon.